What exactly is the defect in third-party drivers that breaks PAE on 32-bit consumer Windows, considering that it was used fine on Windows Server, and 32-bit Linux?
edit: By the way, PAE is a prerequisite for no-execute pages (aka DEP), so XP SP2 and later actually ran with it enabled, but must have avoided using physical memory over 4GB, so that must be key to it. Truncation of addresses to 32 bits by drivers doing bus mastering/DMA?

I'm using that PAE kernal on XP with 24GB of RAM, and the printer drivers (when installed) do now crash MS Works 7 when printing.
Even if I'm merely trying to use PDF printer.

Another flaw is that the patch breaks an N64 emulator now (Project64 1.6?).
Well, at least when having more than 12 or 16 GB of RAM installed.
Running it in Virtualbox with limited RAM works as a workaround.

So yeah, the PAE kernal technically works but users using it should be prepared that it's not exactly reliable.
If it's merely for the looks, 64-Bit Windows XP is a better choice, I think.

The reason I'm using it on one dedicated PC is because I have things like 32-Bit null-modem drivers and 32-Bit Softh Synths (use DirectX/DirectMusic, DirectSound).

Oh, and I'm also using those KernelEx equivalents (One Core something)..
It actually works, some Windows 10/11 era programs run (Win32 versions only), even when needing some functions of DirectX 10/11 runtime.
But that's far from being stable, too. But fun for trying out some 2D indie games from itch.io, for example.

Edit: Another "defect" seems to be broken hard disk managment here.
After using PAE kernal, my XP installation could nolonger check USB pen drives and HDDs for filesystem errors. On Windows, I mean.
The "ScanDisk" equivalent to Windows NT that runs at boot up still works.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-28, 00:03:

I tried PAE RAM patch on XP once and OS started crashing left and right. The Creative's drivers are noticeably sloppier on old operating systems. Only reason I bothered trying 32-bit XP was for the damn DirectSound3D acceleration that refuses to work under 64-bit XP on my system.

If it helps ease your mind, I just did some testing to see if WinXP era games come close to using 2 GB RAM. So far, it doesn't seem to be the case. That said, I've only tested a few popular games at this time, but others are free to chime in as well.

See here for more details: Monitoring RAM usage under WinXP while gaming

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-27, 22:55:

theelf wrote on 2025-04-27, 22:48:

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-23, 21:28:

How come no one mentioned 32-bit Windows XP on a system with more than 3 GB of RAM? Yes, 32-bit OS on 64-bit CPU was mentioned, but I always think of RAM first.

Why? i use XP 32bits and my PC have 8GB ram and i will update to 16GB as soon i can

I assume you know 32bit operating systems cannot address beyond 4Gb of memory, usually itll be 3.8Gb usable by windows, the rest is ignored by the OS and cannot be used.

There is PAE which does allow more than 4Gb but its ...well a cludge and has its own issues and limitations that are not present in a 64bit OS.

I dont use pae because some old incompatible drivers, what i do is a ramdrive of all unused ram and there i put swap file and temp files

4gb+ is ignored but can be used

I guess not withholding DirectX updates for video cards that require them counts. Crap advice abound with recurring misconceptions of how the DirectX APIs work... the hardware comes in when they start leaving DX6.1 on their 'service pack'd Win98se to run a GeforceFX with expecting stuff to work

leileilol wrote on 2025-04-28, 07:14:

I guess not withholding DirectX updates for video cards that require them counts. Crap advice abound with recurring misconceptions of how the DirectX APIs work... the hardware comes in when they start leaving DX6.1 on their 'service pack'd Win98se to run a GeforceFX with expecting stuff to work

Agreed. I've seen that recommended in way too many places. It boggles the mind.

Whenever I see someone using DirectX 7 with a GeForce FX 5950 Ultra running 56.64 drivers I want to do a Picard facepalm. At the very least, the DirectX version that was current when the GPU driver was released should be used. Higher DirectX versions usually don't cause any problems, except in weirdly specific cases, like Aureal Vortex cards and their somewhat unstable drivers.

Doesn't even have to involve the capabilities of the card. The later Voodoo2 and 3 drivers require DirectX 7 or they'll just crash otherwise, for example.

I for one have a fairly basic "DirectX rule", that has always worked well for me (talking about Win98 specifically):

- All cards (including all Voodoo cards) up to a GeForce 2 GTS or Radeon equivalent: DirectX 7 (it's the first thing I install after the actual OS).
- GeForce 3 / GeForce 4 Ti / Radeon 8xxx: DirectX 8.1
- GeForce FX / GeForce 6xxx / Radeon 9700 & 9800 / Radeon x8xx: DirectX 9.0c from 2005.

This has always worked perfectly for my particular use case, irrespective of the platform.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-28, 06:19:

If it helps ease your mind, I just did some testing to see if WinXP era games come close to using 2 GB RAM. So far, it doesn't seem to be the case. That said, I've only tested a few popular games at this time, but others are free to chime in as well.

See here for more details: Monitoring RAM usage under WinXP while gaming

It's more about the fact that I already have working tweaked to my liking XP x64 install. Keeping another install around adds to already insane amount of existing junk that is impossible to organize and keep track of. Also, old games may be modded in a way that original requirements may be exceeded.

bloodem wrote on 2025-04-28, 09:08:

I for one have a fairly basic "DirectX rule", that has always worked well for me (talking about Win98 specifically): […]
Show full quote

I for one have a fairly basic "DirectX rule", that has always worked well for me (talking about Win98 specifically):

- All cards (including all Voodoo cards) up to a GeForce 2 GTS or Radeon equivalent: DirectX 7 (it's the first thing I install after the actual OS).
- GeForce 3 / GeForce 4 Ti / Radeon 8xxx: DirectX 8.1
- GeForce FX / GeForce 6xxx / Radeon 9700 & 9800 / Radeon x8xx: DirectX 9.0c from 2005.

This has always worked perfectly for my particular use case, irrespective of the platform.

I agree with you. That makes sense, I think.

Personally, I stuck to DirectX 6.1 on Windows 98SE for a little longer time because that's what it had shipped with.
To me, it has that classic Direct3D that's all about MMX and bump-mapping..
It also has the old spinning-cube in DXDiag utility.
Last but not least, it had that late "90s feel" to it. Reminds me of the days of 486 processors, WinAmp, IrfanView etc.

But I must say that I think I was more of a "casual gamer", so to say.
I had played 2D games, like that game about Sven the sheep, RPG Maker games, Moorhen.
Many games were happy with DirectX 3/5 already.

DirectX 7 is the final version of the classic DirectX (pre-shader models) that
also had been supported by classic Microsoft products (there's support for Visual Basic 5/6 in DirectX 7 SDK).
It's also the last version with a sophisticated software-renderer, I think.
So it's especially useful to 2D cards and to early 3D cards.

DirectX 7 also supports GeForce 256's Transform-and-Lighting (T&L).
(GeForce 256 sort of was GeForce 1, so your GeForce 2 limit is very close).
DirectDraw was last updated in DirectX 7, too, I believe.

Before DirectX 8/9, the software rendering used to be the reference
and applications had to be expected to run fine without a 3D graphics card, as well.

When the 90s ended, fat and power hungry graphics cards with their PSU became sort-of standard. ;)
Water-cooling became common, too. Previously, in the 90s, a little cooling fan was considered an extreme measure already. ;)

PS: That being said, our family PC (Pentium 3 733MHz, GeForce 2MX?) later got upgraded to Windows XP..
Which featured DirectX 8.1, then DirectX 9. Also in parts because of Windows Media Player and video codecs, which needed newer DirectX.

PS/2: Sorry for the many replies, I'm quiet now. ^^

Win8

bloodem wrote on 2025-04-28, 09:08:

I for one have a fairly basic "DirectX rule", that has always worked well for me (talking about Win98 specifically): […]
Show full quote

I for one have a fairly basic "DirectX rule", that has always worked well for me (talking about Win98 specifically):

- All cards (including all Voodoo cards) up to a GeForce 2 GTS or Radeon equivalent: DirectX 7 (it's the first thing I install after the actual OS).
- GeForce 3 / GeForce 4 Ti / Radeon 8xxx: DirectX 8.1
- GeForce FX / GeForce 6xxx / Radeon 9700 & 9800 / Radeon x8xx: DirectX 9.0c from 2005.

This has always worked perfectly for my particular use case, irrespective of the platform.

that's a reasonable approach, on win 98se I've learned to leave directx at the least 'needed' version according to the games that will get played. that said i never really encountered many problems with using one driver or another, i'm sure there are optimisations but i always get sufficient to play a game with whatever driver makes the component work

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2025-04-28, 21:02:

Win8

you don't like combining Win8 with Win8?

Oh, perfect thread for a showerthought I had a few days ago:

For some reason, there's a hard split in my mind between 20th and 21st century processors, even though they're generally pretty similar, and the split isn't even clean 20th century since Pentium 4 is 20th and is on the modern end of that. AXP/P4 just feel more like modern CPUs than Athlon/P3 do, even though there's no objective reason to feel that way because both are almost identical in terms of software support and the like to their predecessors. Maybe the move from measuring in MHz to GHz? I guess Athlon 1GHz is usually rendered "Athlon 1GHz"...

I'm unsure of where Motorola 7400 falls in this. Objectively, it's to the 750 as the PIII was to the PII, but it's just so associated with the new millennium and Mac OS X. So, it feels weird to use Mac OS 9 on any G4 (except the Titanium PowerBooks I guess?), 98 and XP have a hard boundary where I'll use them at the PIII/Athlon/VIA C3/Transmeta Crusoe and P4/Athlon XP/VIA C7/Transmeta Efficeon line, and there's a weird dead zone between Pentium 4 and Opteron 200 where Linux doesn't really come into play that doesn't exist in PowerPC because I have it installed on a PowerBook G4 which is definitely closer to the former.

I guess for a bespoke combo for this thread, for some reason I just don't really care for matching GPU and CPU in terms of the year. I'll do a years-old CPU and more recent GPU combo (see my Pentium II with an FX 5200) or a years-old GPU and a more recent CPU (I'm considering getting an S3 ViRGE 325 and an Intel 740 to occasionally throw in either my Athlon 700 build or maybe a potential Athlon 550 since I have one of those lying around, or maybe swap the ViRGE into the Pentium II and have the 740 in the 550?), but like, a Riva TNT2 or Rage 128 just don't feel like they pair with a 700MHz Athlon or Pentium III, either CPU honestly feel more right to me paired with a GF4 Ti/Radeon 8500 (and the GPUs I'd pair with like a Pentium MMX/PII/PPC750). I can't really see the notion that a PC is only period accurate if all the parts come from the same year, there have to be some people that upgraded their computers with individual components two or three years down the line, and maybe that's where my mind is going with that, where that feels more "real" or "lived-in".

And yeah, as for XP, I have an AMD FX-6100 box that I use for XP Overkill, and it's got XP Pro x64 partly because nobody ever uses it and partly because why not use all 64 bits if I have them, in case any 64-bit software just so happens to run on it? So far drivers don't seem to be a big problem, both the Creative (Audigy 1) and Nvidia (GTX 970) drivers installed and work just fine.

I used Office 97 not only with XP but I think even a few years into getting back into Linux after having a Windows 7/8.1-shaped diversion from it, I just appreciated how it did everything I needed it to, nothing I didn't, and didn't cost $300. Nowadays I use LibreOffice but I can't deny I kind of miss the simplicity of Word 97 especially, I'd use it again if need be.

Bonus: in the modern day, anything Intel. Their GPUs are somewhat interesting but B580 is basically unobtainium at MSRP and I could easily find a used RX 7600 for half that price, let alone the $450 that seems to be the average scalper price. I've had a blacklist on any new Intel parts for years now, it's not a result of the 13th/14th gen thing (though that was fuel on the fire). I'm probably not going to buy an AMD Ryzen either unless I really have a need for it, so I guess that's the entire AMD64-based processor market gone right there, which is fine. There's plenty of decent options out there besides them, like Raptor Blackbird (PowerPC) and Radxa Orion (ARM) that are speed-competitive.

lepidotós wrote on 2025-04-29, 10:55:

I guess for a bespoke combo for this thread, for some reason I just don't really care for matching GPU and CPU in terms of the year. I'll do a years-old CPU and more recent GPU combo (see my Pentium II with an FX 5200) or a years-old GPU and a more recent CPU (I'm considering getting an S3 ViRGE 325 and an Intel 740 to occasionally throw in either my Athlon 700 build or maybe a potential Athlon 550 since I have one of those lying around, or maybe swap the ViRGE into the Pentium II and have the 740 in the 550?), but like, a Riva TNT2 or Rage 128 just don't feel like they pair with a 700MHz Athlon or Pentium III, either CPU honestly feel more right to me paired with a GF4 Ti/Radeon 8500 (and the GPUs I'd pair with like a Pentium MMX/PII/PPC750). I can't really see the notion that a PC is only period accurate if all the parts come from the same year, there have to be some people that upgraded their computers with individual components two or three years down the line, and maybe that's where my mind is going with that, where that feels more "real" or "lived-in".

i'm ok with mingling graphics cards, like you say it reflects upgrades - up to a point anyway. I don't like it when the card is way older than the pc as i said above

And yeah, as for XP, I have an AMD FX-6100 box that I use for XP Overkill,

argh!

and it's got XP Pro x64 partly because nobody ever uses it and partly because why not use all 64 bits if I have them

oh ok 😀 that seems fine!

lepidotós wrote on 2025-04-29, 10:55:

Oh, perfect thread for a showerthought I had a few days ago: […]
Show full quote

Oh, perfect thread for a showerthought I had a few days ago:

For some reason, there's a hard split in my mind between 20th and 21st century processors, even though they're generally pretty similar, and the split isn't even clean 20th century since Pentium 4 is 20th and is on the modern end of that. AXP/P4 just feel more like modern CPUs than Athlon/P3 do, even though there's no objective reason to feel that way because both are almost identical in terms of software support and the like to their predecessors. Maybe the move from measuring in MHz to GHz? I guess Athlon 1GHz is usually rendered "Athlon 1GHz"...

I'm unsure of where Motorola 7400 falls in this. Objectively, it's to the 750 as the PIII was to the PII, but it's just so associated with the new millennium and Mac OS X. So, it feels weird to use Mac OS 9 on any G4 (except the Titanium PowerBooks I guess?), 98 and XP have a hard boundary where I'll use them at the PIII/Athlon/VIA C3/Transmeta Crusoe and P4/Athlon XP/VIA C7/Transmeta Efficeon line, and there's a weird dead zone between Pentium 4 and Opteron 200 where Linux doesn't really come into play that doesn't exist in PowerPC because I have it installed on a PowerBook G4 which is definitely closer to the former.

I guess for a bespoke combo for this thread, for some reason I just don't really care for matching GPU and CPU in terms of the year. I'll do a years-old CPU and more recent GPU combo (see my Pentium II with an FX 5200) or a years-old GPU and a more recent CPU (I'm considering getting an S3 ViRGE 325 and an Intel 740 to occasionally throw in either my Athlon 700 build or maybe a potential Athlon 550 since I have one of those lying around, or maybe swap the ViRGE into the Pentium II and have the 740 in the 550?), but like, a Riva TNT2 or Rage 128 just don't feel like they pair with a 700MHz Athlon or Pentium III, either CPU honestly feel more right to me paired with a GF4 Ti/Radeon 8500 (and the GPUs I'd pair with like a Pentium MMX/PII/PPC750). I can't really see the notion that a PC is only period accurate if all the parts come from the same year, there have to be some people that upgraded their computers with individual components two or three years down the line, and maybe that's where my mind is going with that, where that feels more "real" or "lived-in".

And yeah, as for XP, I have an AMD FX-6100 box that I use for XP Overkill, and it's got XP Pro x64 partly because nobody ever uses it and partly because why not use all 64 bits if I have them, in case any 64-bit software just so happens to run on it? So far drivers don't seem to be a big problem, both the Creative (Audigy 1) and Nvidia (GTX 970) drivers installed and work just fine.

I used Office 97 not only with XP but I think even a few years into getting back into Linux after having a Windows 7/8.1-shaped diversion from it, I just appreciated how it did everything I needed it to, nothing I didn't, and didn't cost $300. Nowadays I use LibreOffice but I can't deny I kind of miss the simplicity of Word 97 especially, I'd use it again if need be.

Bonus: in the modern day, anything Intel. Their GPUs are somewhat interesting but B580 is basically unobtainium at MSRP and I could easily find a used RX 7600 for half that price, let alone the $450 that seems to be the average scalper price. I've had a blacklist on any new Intel parts for years now, it's not a result of the 13th/14th gen thing (though that was fuel on the fire). I'm probably not going to buy an AMD Ryzen either unless I really have a need for it, so I guess that's the entire AMD64-based processor market gone right there, which is fine. There's plenty of decent options out there besides them, like Raptor Blackbird (PowerPC) and Radxa Orion (ARM) that are speed-competitive.

Ive had a Arc B850 for a while now and I would never in a million years take a Radeon 7600 over it, I would rather wait for a B850 or Snaffle one at a slightly high cost.

AMD skimped on the 7000 series and then tried to make up for it with software FSR...something they fixed with the 9000 series with dedicated FSR hardware.

I guess RX 5000, RX 6000 and RX7000 cards are on my shit list especially the RX 5700 ..utter pile of shit that card was, only worth using as a shooting target.

I have no issues with the RX9000 cards or the Radeon VII cards or Vega cards .. its just the clearly rushed cards in between, it was clear AMD was playing catchup to nVidia and not till the 9070 XT did they manage to cross that line and made a card worth grabbing over the shit RTX 5000 cards..

gerry wrote on 2025-04-29, 15:59:

i'm ok with mingling graphics cards, like you say it reflects upgrades - up to a point anyway. I don't like it when the card i […]
Show full quote

lepidotós wrote on 2025-04-29, 10:55:

I guess for a bespoke combo for this thread, for some reason I just don't really care for matching GPU and CPU in terms of the year. I'll do a years-old CPU and more recent GPU combo (see my Pentium II with an FX 5200) or a years-old GPU and a more recent CPU (I'm considering getting an S3 ViRGE 325 and an Intel 740 to occasionally throw in either my Athlon 700 build or maybe a potential Athlon 550 since I have one of those lying around, or maybe swap the ViRGE into the Pentium II and have the 740 in the 550?), but like, a Riva TNT2 or Rage 128 just don't feel like they pair with a 700MHz Athlon or Pentium III, either CPU honestly feel more right to me paired with a GF4 Ti/Radeon 8500 (and the GPUs I'd pair with like a Pentium MMX/PII/PPC750). I can't really see the notion that a PC is only period accurate if all the parts come from the same year, there have to be some people that upgraded their computers with individual components two or three years down the line, and maybe that's where my mind is going with that, where that feels more "real" or "lived-in".

i'm ok with mingling graphics cards, like you say it reflects upgrades - up to a point anyway. I don't like it when the card is way older than the pc as i said above

And yeah, as for XP, I have an AMD FX-6100 box that I use for XP Overkill,

argh!

and it's got XP Pro x64 partly because nobody ever uses it and partly because why not use all 64 bits if I have them

oh ok 😀 that seems fine!

I think I would rather use Windows 2003 over XP 64, wouldn't take much tweaking to get all the bells and whistles running and covert it to a desktop platform.

Since Server 2003 is really a upgraded version of XP64 it should be far more stable too and less likely to have hiccups like XP64 can do.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-30, 03:01:

Since Server 2003 is really a upgraded version of XP64 it should be far more stable too and less likely to have hiccups like XP64 can do.

I think you have that backwards. Server 2003 came out April 2003, XP 64 came out 2 years late in April 2005.

pete8475 wrote on 2025-04-30, 09:38:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-30, 03:01:

Since Server 2003 is really a upgraded version of XP64 it should be far more stable too and less likely to have hiccups like XP64 can do.

I think you have that backwards. Server 2003 came out April 2003, XP 64 came out 2 years late in April 2005.

You are correct, ill go fix that !

Just reading I do wonder just how different 2003 SP2 and XP64 SP2 are ...Im guessing by the end Server 2003 had far better driver support.